The  destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican  and Democratic leaders in Washington    by increasing our forces  there instead of surrendering.

We  can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there,  David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world  on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our  military in  Iraq    who   engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them   America    was their friend and  AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of  ordinary Iraqis began in  Anbar    Province , which had  been written off as a basket case, and spread out from  there.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and  the  U.S.    3rd Armored Cavalry  Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left.  More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been  apprehended.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling  with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in  bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds,  and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul   urban  base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into  the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved  'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks 'a big  change for the better from a year ago.'

Things are going so well that Maliki has even  for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal  of  American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates ,  which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a  fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But  where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good  news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the  CBS  Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.'

The  war in  Iraq  has been turned around180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the  foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event  a  big story.

Copyright 2008 Investor's Business Daily. All Rights Reserved.

Addendum:  The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country.  They are controlled by Liberal Democrats who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful Republican initiated response to 9/11.